How Richard Wright’s Hammond M-100 Was Mic’d for ‘The Great Gig in the Sky’

Yes, engineers Alan Parsons and Chris Thomas used a Neumann U‑87 as a room mic placed a few feet away from the Leslie 147 cabinet, with two Shure SM57s close-miking the upper and lower rotors. The U‑87 captured the air around the cabinet; the SM57s gave them the direct, punchier tone they could blend later. That setup is why the organ on the track sounds both huge and intimate—the room mic catches the way the Leslie’s spinning horns throw sound around the studio.

As for the Leslie speed, it was set to slow (chorale) for the entire performance. The dramatic chord changes—those rolling, almost suspended Cm7 to Fmaj7 shifts—come from Wright’s voicings and the natural swell of the Hammond tonewheel generator, not from a fast tremolo. The slow speed gives the organ that deep, breathing pulse that blankets the track without drawing attention to the